Final Trip on the AP - Report

[GatorChris]

A year ago, we knew we'd be taking this week long trip in November - it's the reason we bought the AP back when it was $100 cheaper. After having it for a year and hitting the parks a total of 27 days (some full, some partial), I can say it was a lot of fun with a little frustration mixed in. But I don't want to talk about the year. I want to talk about the week+ we just had. So here goes...and it won't be short.

- Big Thunder Ranch: did this on the first day and it was as good as always. Love the food and outdoors atmosphere. Going to miss this place a lot.
- Space Mountain DOWN: let me tell you, when SpaceMt is down, it changes the dynamics of the entire park. Other FPs go quicker, other lines are longer, and the park is just more congested because thousands aren't pouring through that line. It really made our DL days a bit of a pain.
- Space Mountain soft opening: we got to experience Hyperspace Mt once on Saturday after I read on a MiceChat facebook post it was open. We ditched DCA, got in line to ride it, and it was awesome.
- Space Mountain-Season of the Breakdown: I rearranged our last few days to be able to be at DL on Tuesday morning so we could do the Star Wars stuff. Within 15 minutes, SpaceMt was down. Easily the biggest bummer of the trip.
- Star Tours: I always love this new version of the ride, even when I get the same sequences back to back. But with the new Star Wars film stuff in it, it was really awesome!
- Blue Bayou Review: we didn't do the F! version (don't see the reason to spend an extra $60-80 for a FP I can get for free). We got a water's edge table which was great, and the food was incredible. Service could've been better, but this was a highlight for us.
- Carthay Circle Review: this place is really too fancy for us. However, the ultimate short rib sandwich was really good. And the kids liked their meals mostly. However, my wife spent $36 on one of the worst tasting foods we've ever tried. Can't remember what it was called - not on any online menus - but it had different cheese and sauces that just didn't jive. I would rather eat radishes and grass before I'd ever try this again. This dish alone sorta tainted the visit.
- Storyteller's Character Breakfast - Folk, save your money. The brunch over at Goofy's Kitchen is far superior in food. Plus!!!! Only 4 characters came out: Chip, Dale, Meeko, and Keenai. And Keenai wandered around for about 15 minutes, then went on a 30 minute break. We were done eating after about 30-40 minutes but stayed 90 minutes to catch that bear. My kids thought it was cool to eat the GCH. Outside of that, it was a total waste. Don't go here.
- Urinals that don't flush: This was the theme for the week. It seems 70-80% of the urinals don't flush when we'd walk away. Don't know if this is some water saving project, but I found it gross that I was having to "go" on top of someone else's urine a majority of the time.
- Tomorrowland Music: I love that they finally got speakers lined on the old People Mover track. Now the awesome Tomorrowland music is heard throughout the whole land, not just over in the Space Mt corner. I'm guessing they spent the money for the big Season of the Force media event. Well worth it for me.
- Word of Color: We got to see both the 60th version and the Winter Dreams. While I love the "Forever Young" tear-jerker song from the 60th, the Winter Dreams version totally kicked butt over the NPH version. It wasn't even close for me, wife, or the kids.
- Crazy Busy: I WILL NOT miss the crowds brought by the 60th. It would be decent for about the first hour or 90 minutes. Then.....insanity! All three days we were at DCA, Tower of Terror ran out of FPs by 3pm, and two of those days it was by 2 pm. I've never seen anything like that. Of course, that may have to do with the fact they only ran two of the three elevators all week. Not sure why that was happening or if that's normal.
- Breakdowns: I know I've been told to expect breakdown. But when Soarin', Jungle Cruise, and Space Mt are down, every other breakdown is like a scratch on top of a sunburn. Wednesday, Big Thunder was down all morning, and Friday Star Tours was down all morning. Add in others like Pirates, Alice (while we were in line), and it's like sand in the shoes.
- Jungle Cruise line: this line is truly a work of art! While it's always a long line, it's almost fun zig-zagging in the craziest way possible to get to the dock. Whoever came us with this system is probably a Lego lover.
- Disneyland Forever: Love this fireworks show. But the crowds were insane in Main Street. I've never see it packed in like this anywhere. Still, the show is great.
- Paint the Night: There's really nothing better than this show. We caught a bench near the castle the first night, and the lucked out with a good spot near Alice on another night. This show is incredible. The 2 hour wait to get a seat may never go away.
- Christmas Fantasy Parade: I dont' feel like it's Christmas until I see this parade. I really do love it. It get's me in the Christmas spirit everytime.
- Clarabelle's at DCA: the "make your own ice cream bar" thing was a huge hit with the kids. They raved about it for days.
- HoJo: We really love this hotel. We always pay extra for the superior view room and it never disappoints. We were able to wake up and see the Matterhorn and Tomorrowland every morning. And seeing Tomorrowland lit up at night was always a real treat. The customer service here is always top of the line. I've never had CS any better anywhere, including the DLH.
- Aladdin: Fare thee well, old friend. We watched it last Tuesday and it was stinking funny. They keep adding little funny quips to keep it fresh. Can't believe it's going. Which leads me to....
- Frozen: Has the hype finally died on this one? We enjoyed Olaf's snow fest. We spent an hour in there on a very hot day. We may have waited 5 minutes to get in - a lot different from earlier this year. And the girls got to meet A&E at the meet in greet. No more FPs. They just stood in line for about 15 minutes. That's it! Makes me wonder if the Frozen Fever has broken and turning the Aladdin show to a Frozen show is still the best bet.

That's all I have time for this morning. There's plenty more I could rave about, but I couldn't go a few days without talking about this trip. It'll be a long time before we go back. I guess that's a good thing and a bad thing. Bad because I'll miss all the good stuff. Good because the more I visit, the more jaded I seem to become about how perfect the trip should be. Hopefully, a little absence will make the heart grow fonder.

 

[WebmasterMaryJo]

I really enjoyed your recap, and am glad you were able to experience both the 60 and Christmas festivities while you were there. I'm especially glad you were able to go on the soft opening at Hyperspace Mountain since it was down during the week.

 

[GatorChris]

Added/edited for Aladdin and Frozen.

 

[Disney127]

Thanks for the re-cap. It's always nice to hear about other people's experiences.

 

[MommyJKM]

- Storyteller's Character Breakfast - Folk, save your money. The brunch over at Goofy's Kitchen is far superior in food. Plus!!!! Only 4 characters came out: Chip, Dale, Meeko, and Keenai. And Keenai wandered around for about 15 minutes, then went on a 30 minute break. We were done eating after about 30-40 minutes but stayed 90 minutes to catch that bear. My kids thought it was cool to eat the GCH. Outside of that, it was a total waste. Don't go here.

I HATE the food at Goofy's Kitchen...peanut butter and jelly pizza??? Gross. And we used to love Storyteller's for Breakfast but there was the option to order off the menu, not just get the buffet (now that they did away with that it's only about $15 more to get room service from the same kitchen). Anyway, I always appreciated the quality of food over the character interaction since my DD doesn't know who Meeko and Keenai are. The breakfast needs to be revamped a little, but the lunch and dinner are pretty great.

 

[GatorChris]

I HATE the food at Goofy's Kitchen...peanut butter and jelly pizza??? Gross.

I guess what I like about Goofy's is the lunch part of the brunch. The breakfast foods are just about the same. However, Goofy's has chorizo, Storyteller's doesn't. And when it comes to omelets, chorizo is king! Honestly, character interaction at Goofy's wasn't that much better, but at least there were 5 characters instead of 4. I felt jipped.

 

[Indiana Scott]

Great comments Chris.
The urinal thing grosses me out too. It was really rare to walk up and find a flushed one - not sure I ever did. There was a time, maybe ten years ago, when they had a CM in the restrooms all the time keeping the counter clean and mopping the floor. Haven't seen that in a long time.

 

[theluckyrabbit]

Maybe the women's restrooms get cleaned more often than the men's (although that doesn't really make much sense since both get dirty)? I usually see someone cleaning the ladies' room whenever I'm in there and I'll thank her for doing such hard, necessary work. (By the way, there is a small button on the flush sensor that can be pushed to manually flush the toilet -- don't know if urinals have this, too.) As far as your poor wife's meal at CCR, if this ever happens again at another DLR restaurant, don't hesitate to talk with your server. It could be a fluke or the meal just could be not your thing. Either way, Disney wants all guests to enjoy their meal if at all possible. Your server could have given your wife something else or removed the meal from your tab.

Glad to hear you got good use out of your passes and that, overall, this last trip was fun.

 

[arcadiandj]

A year ago, we knew we'd be taking this week long trip in November - it's the reason we bought the AP back when it was $100 cheaper. After having it for a year and hitting the parks a total of 27 days (some full, some partial), I can say it was a lot of fun with a little frustration mixed in. But I don't want to talk about the year. I want to talk about the week+ we just had. So here goes...and it won't be short.

- Big Thunder Ranch: did this on the first day and it was as good as always. Love the food and outdoors atmosphere. Going to miss this place a lot.
- Space Mountain DOWN: let me tell you, when SpaceMt is down, it changes the dynamics of the entire park. Other FPs go quicker, other lines are longer, and the park is just more congested because thousands aren't pouring through that line. It really made our DL days a bit of a pain.
- Space Mountain soft opening: we got to experience Hyperspace Mt once on Saturday after I read on a MiceChat facebook post it was open. We ditched DCA, got in line to ride it, and it was awesome.
- Space Mountain-Season of the Breakdown: I rearranged our last few days to be able to be at DL on Tuesday morning so we could do the Star Wars stuff. Within 15 minutes, SpaceMt was down. Easily the biggest bummer of the trip.
- Star Tours: I always love this new version of the ride, even when I get the same sequences back to back. But with the new Star Wars film stuff in it, it was really awesome!
- Blue Bayou Review: we didn't do the F! version (don't see the reason to spend an extra $60-80 for a FP I can get for free). We got a water's edge table which was great, and the food was incredible. Service could've been better, but this was a highlight for us.
- Carthay Circle Review: this place is really too fancy for us. However, the ultimate short rib sandwich was really good. And the kids liked their meals mostly. However, my wife spent $36 on one of the worst tasting foods we've ever tried. Can't remember what it was called - not on any online menus - but it had different cheese and sauces that just didn't jive. I would rather eat radishes and grass before I'd ever try this again. This dish alone sorta tainted the visit.
- Storyteller's Character Breakfast - Folk, save your money. The brunch over at Goofy's Kitchen is far superior in food. Plus!!!! Only 4 characters came out: Chip, Dale, Meeko, and Keenai. And Keenai wandered around for about 15 minutes, then went on a 30 minute break. We were done eating after about 30-40 minutes but stayed 90 minutes to catch that bear. My kids thought it was cool to eat the GCH. Outside of that, it was a total waste. Don't go here.
- Urinals that don't flush: This was the theme for the week. It seems 70-80% of the urinals don't flush when we'd walk away. Don't know if this is some water saving project, but I found it gross that I was having to "go" on top of someone else's urine a majority of the time.
- Tomorrowland Music: I love that they finally got speakers lined on the old People Mover track. Now the awesome Tomorrowland music is heard throughout the whole land, not just over in the Space Mt corner. I'm guessing they spent the money for the big Season of the Force media event. Well worth it for me.
- Word of Color: We got to see both the 60th version and the Winter Dreams. While I love the "Forever Young" tear-jerker song from the 60th, the Winter Dreams version totally kicked butt over the NPH version. It wasn't even close for me, wife, or the kids.
- Crazy Busy: I WILL NOT miss the crowds brought by the 60th. It would be decent for about the first hour or 90 minutes. Then.....insanity! All three days we were at DCA, Tower of Terror ran out of FPs by 3pm, and two of those days it was by 2 pm. I've never seen anything like that. Of course, that may have to do with the fact they only ran two of the three elevators all week. Not sure why that was happening or if that's normal.
- Breakdowns: I know I've been told to expect breakdown. But when Soarin', Jungle Cruise, and Space Mt are down, every other breakdown is like a scratch on top of a sunburn. Wednesday, Big Thunder was down all morning, and Friday Star Tours was down all morning. Add in others like Pirates, Alice (while we were in line), and it's like sand in the shoes.
- Jungle Cruise line: this line is truly a work of art! While it's always a long line, it's almost fun zig-zagging in the craziest way possible to get to the dock. Whoever came us with this system is probably a Lego lover.
- Disneyland Forever: Love this fireworks show. But the crowds were insane in Main Street. I've never see it packed in like this anywhere. Still, the show is great.
- Paint the Night: There's really nothing better than this show. We caught a bench near the castle the first night, and the lucked out with a good spot near Alice on another night. This show is incredible. The 2 hour wait to get a seat may never go away.
- Christmas Fantasy Parade: I dont' feel like it's Christmas until I see this parade. I really do love it. It get's me in the Christmas spirit everytime.
- Clarabelle's at DCA: the "make your own ice cream bar" thing was a huge hit with the kids. They raved about it for days.
- HoJo: We really love this hotel. We always pay extra for the superior view room and it never disappoints. We were able to wake up and see the Matterhorn and Tomorrowland every morning. And seeing Tomorrowland lit up at night was always a real treat. The customer service here is always top of the line. I've never had CS any better anywhere, including the DLH.
- Aladdin: Fare thee well, old friend. We watched it last Tuesday and it was stinking funny. They keep adding little funny quips to keep it fresh. Can't believe it's going. Which leads me to....
- Frozen: Has the hype finally died on this one? We enjoyed Olaf's snow fest. We spent an hour in there on a very hot day. We may have waited 5 minutes to get in - a lot different from earlier this year. And the girls got to meet A&E at the meet in greet. No more FPs. They just stood in line for about 15 minutes. That's it! Makes me wonder if the Frozen Fever has broken and turning the Aladdin show to a Frozen show is still the best bet.

That's all I have time for this morning. There's plenty more I could rave about, but I couldn't go a few days without talking about this trip. It'll be a long time before we go back. I guess that's a good thing and a bad thing. Bad because I'll miss all the good stuff. Good because the more I visit, the more jaded I seem to become about how perfect the trip should be. Hopefully, a little absence will make the heart grow fonder.

Great report! Thank you! I love your format, FYI.